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More On The Horrors Of State Run Medicine

In a previous post, I've discussed the horrifying effects on patients in Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) when government bureaucrats make medical decisions based on a formula that measures the expected quality of life if a patient is allowed to survive. Despite the full-court press being run on reporters to influence them to positively report on Obamacare, the real, tangible results of bureaucratic medicine are plain for the world to see.

Several more recent reports have detailed mistreatment of patients in the NHS due more to bureaucratic than medical decisions. The most shocking of which was an audit of the Liverpool Care Pathway, which revealed that almost half of all dying patients were never told that life-saving treatment had been withdrawn. According to the London Telegraph,

The study suggests that in total, around 57,000 patients a year are dying in NHS hospitals without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped.

It also reveals that thousands of dying patients have been left to suffer in pain, with no attempt to keep them comfortable while drugs were administered.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the epitome of a death panel. Bureaucrats making life or death decisions, solely for budgetary concerns. These revelations have led public officials to begin a formal inquest: "the failure to consult patients would now be examined by an independent inquiry, which will also look at payments made to hospitals for meeting targets to place people on the pathway." [emphasis added]

3. Encourage hospitals to put patients on medical death row when treatment is considered fiscally futile.

All these payment instruments are put in place by the British government to cap the costs of operating the National Health Service. Cost containment has infiltrated the practice of medicine to such a degree where the final word on a person’s health, even life, is fiscal, not medical.

The practitioners of eugenics are nothing short of statist ghouls. The very idea that an individual is completely removed from making his or her own decision on how to survive is macabre and barbaric. Creating sophisticated mathematical formulas like QALY to back up a public policy doesn't make the policy smarter, if that policy removes the fundamental, innate right to live one's own life in favor of "the greater good". It seem obvious that it is impossible to serve the greater good if the rights of the individual are involuntarily sacrificed.

… Loss of humanity is a predictable consequence of centralized control. As the quality of healthcare worsens, the technocracy kicks into high gear, issuing more regulations, guidelines, and treatment (or rationing) checklists–further devolving medicine into a deprofessionalized, connect-the-dots craft. And that can be deadly.

The same thing will happen in the U.S. once Obamacare’s cost/benefit and best care standards bureaucracies are up and running.

Many on the Left will argue that while rare examples may be found where the bureaucracy left one or two patients out in the cold, overall the system's benefits outweigh these occasional tragedies. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the bureaucracy is the sole cause in many cases of suffering and death. The cure is clearly worse than the disease.

Last week, I wrote about how insurance companies are receiving only a fraction of the money they asked for to compensate them for losses under the Affordable Care Act, and how this was a consequence of structural weaknesses in the design of the law. Now, analysts from ratings firm Standard and Poor's are saying that the risk corridor fund charged with providing this money is nearly exhausted, and that congressional action will likely be required to refill it sometime next year.

Ever since home brewing was legalized in the late 1970s, the craft beer industry has become one of America's most vibrant examples of entrepreneurship and small business. It doesn't take much more than some barley, some hops, and a dream to start your own private microbrewery, and if you're good at it, you could become a nationally recognized brand.

An old rhetorical question asks: "If social Security is such a great deal, why is it mandatory?" A topically apt paraphrase of this would be: "if ObamaCare is so good for health care, why is the president still struggling to sell it five years after it became law?" What does it say about a policy that people refuse to take advantage of - and I use the word "advantage" very loosely - without significant arm twisting? Even though it has been made flat out illegal not to purchase health insurance, millions of people are still staying far, far away from ObamaCare's insurance exchanges, because they know that the legal penalty will actually be less painful than participating in the government-controlled health insurance market.

It's always a good idea to look at the incentive structure behind any public policy. Analyzing how people are induced to behave, and the consequences of those behaviors, is a pretty good indication of whether a plan will succeed or fail. ObamaCare is too vast an example to take all at once, but new information sheds light on a particular piece of the health care law is contributing to the skyrocketing price of insurance.

Much of the recent news covering the failures of ObamaCare have focused on the collapse of the nonprofit cooperatives authorized by the law. Just last week, for example, Utah's cooperative became the tenth to fail. Billions of taxpayer dollars were spent to get these insurance cooperatives off the ground, a compromise for Democrats who wanted a single-payer option, and they have proven to be unsustainable. But another failure of the law is rising insurance premiums on the individual health insurance market.

Once upon a time, ObamaCare created 23 non-profit health insurance co-ops that were supposed to increase coverage while reducing costs. Doesn't that sound nice? Well, this is a good time to keep in mind the old saying "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

Over the past year or so, I’ve expended considerable ink on the underreported problem of ObamaCare deductibles. What few people understand about insurance is that you don’t get a dime from the insurer until you pay the deductible amount out of pocket. Until then, you might as well not be covered. So, when people see low premiums and fancy coverage options, they could be getting sucked into what is actually a bad deal - a deductible they will never be able to reach.

The House Ways and Means Committee has advanced legislation that would repeal most of ObamaCare, including the individual and employer mandates, as well as multiple taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act.

Over twenty years after the spectacular failure of "HillaryCare", Hillary Clinton is back in the health care debate. The collection of modest proposals she has made recently gives us a glimpse into her vision for “HillaryCare, 2.0”. With ObamaCare already taking a huge step towards accomplishing her goal of total government control of health care, Hillary’s new, more measured approach is just to keep nudging current policies further in that direction.